Portland City Commissioner-elect Randy Leonard wastes no time. In today's Portland Tribune, he is already quoted as refusing to succumb to "city think" -- the willingness to say yes to whatever the big money contributors propose without first talking to a broad base of constituents.

You tell 'em, Randy!

I hope this attitude persists throughout Leonard's four-year term. As I e-mailed him on election night:

We were with you all the way. Please get down there and counteract some of the silliness being perpetrated by Vera and Erik. Stop giving public money away to Homer, Joe Weston and the West Hills old-money mafia. Kill the tram. No more Pearl District trolleys. No more methadone clinics and gangster halfway houses in east-side residential neighborhoods. Enough with the Convention Center white elephants. Do something for the east side, particularly southeast. Get the police stations open at night again. How about a decent mental health system, and better facilities for the homeless so that they don't all live in the St. Francis Park?

Don't succumb to the disease that most people catch once they sit in that council chair. We are looking up to you.

Wipe off that mud they threw on you, and get to work, guy.

Now if we could just find a like-minded, credible candidate for mayor....